In Essar 2.0 Ruia Will Opt For ‘Cautious And Conservative’ Investments

The delisting was part of the process which just culminated. It was driven by this process of trying to find a buyer. Since our public float was very small, that would be a huge distraction for any investor.

In 2010.

Two years ago. Look, the thing which changed was the way investors were looking at India when we were going through a difficult regulatory process in the power sector. That made their valuation of the company and their ability to invest more funds into the company difficult. This was in the last two years of the previous government when we went through huge regulatory problems and all international investors were worried about their investments, especially in those sectors. So, this was the reaction to that event. It was not specific to us. Many companies have gone through these problems with their international investors during that time. That was a specific problem, that they became uncomfortable with what was going on at the time. They are comfortable again now because things have changed now. There's a lot more transparency today in the policy which has brought international investors back.

There is no such decision. If you look at Essar Oil, a company which we started 20 years ago with a market capitalisation of Rs 2,000 crore is today getting valued at Rs 50,000 crore. Yes, we had difficulties along the way. Anyone investing in green field assets in India goes through those difficulties. Public markets don't understand those situations at all times. If the question is, if you are in a green field project, would you consider going to the public, I would think twice. Because in green field projects there is a certain amount of inherent risk and public markets don't necessarily understand that risk fully or are not willing to take that risk fully. However, when you are in an operating business then it's a different ball game. There is no decision as such to not go back to the public market. But, when the company's main asset is a green field asset, then it becomes very difficult going public.

Rs 50,000-Rs 60,000 crore across the various companies at this point of time of which Rs 40,000 is on Essar Steel. Many companies in the group don't have significant amount of debt and some have debt which is asset driven.

Essar has come up on this list because we have made big bets in investing in infrastructure projects in India and have faced certain amount of regulatory problems which we had not identified. Many other groups have had the same issues. For example, in the case of Essar Oil, it didn't have any regulatory problems. We were in a position to complete the expansion in time in 2010. We were in a position to create significant amount of value in those assets, as many other people have done with their assets. It's a function of which projects got caught in regulatory problems.

House of Debt and those reports merely talk about the debt without looking at the assets and earnings. In hindsight, I don't think that the bets which we took, in terms of assets and investments, where incorrect. Some of the risks which we faced was something which we could not have foreseen. We have learnt from that.

The majority of our investments has been in infrastructure. We have some unique abilities to build and create assets from scratch. Very few people in this country have done this successfully. If we are able to ring-fence some of the risk which we have seen in the last 4-5 years then that's a tremendous asset to have for the future.

We have certainly now completed the previous phase and we are looking at the next phase and we are excited about it.